CGAP and Habib Bank Limited (HBL), the largest commercial bank in Pakistan, recently worked with the design firm Continuum Innovation to better understand the constraints of linking government-to-person (G2P) payments with financial inclusion in poor areas in Pakistan. The ethnographic research focused on women beneficiaries of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP).

1. Financial Inclusion for the Poorest
Women in Pakistan
10 January 2014

2. G2P
Financial Inclusion for the
Poorest Women in Pakistan

3. T h e Pr o j e c t
CGAP and Habib Bank Limited (HBL), the largest commercial bank in Pakistan, recently
worked with the design firm Continuum Innovation to better understand the constraints of
linking government-to-person (G2P) payments with financial inclusion in poor areas in
Pakistan.
The ethnographic research focused on women beneficiaries of the Benazir Income
Support Program (BISP).
Pr o j e c t G o a ls
CGAP
•
Gain a deeper understanding of G2P beneficiaries in the Benazir Income Support
Program, BISP, and assess whether or not they are capable of being “banked.”
•
Increase financial inclusion amongst BISP beneficiaries
•
Institutionalize Human Centered Design Process at HBL
HBL
•
Increase use of Branchless Banking

4. BISP
The government of Pakistan established the Benazir Income Support Programme, BISP in 2008 to
distribute cash payments to low income families. Currently, BISP distributes PKR 3,000 each quarter
to about 5 million of the poorest women in Pakistan. PKR 3,000 is about $30 at current exchange
rates, so the payments are worth about $10 a month.

5. Researcher
(Harry)
BISP
Recipient
Facilitator
(Nadia)
Researcher
(Rachel)
Translator
We worked directly with BISP recipients to understand their values, attitudes and behaviors,
understand the problems they face, and to create and test solutions that work for them. Only once we
have a human solution do we look for ways to bring it into the business.

6. This woman’s
husband is a welder
and she makes and
sells these
key chains.
Each interview lasted about an hour. We asked about their life. Their sources of income, social circles,
anxieties and finally, their financial behaviors, thoughts on BISP and banking.

7. I N T E RV I E W S
Base
Location
Type
Number of Subjects
Lahore
Sanda
urban
6
Lahore
Jindra
village on the rural outskirts of urban center
4
Lahore
Sharif Pura
urban
4
Multan
Multan
urban
6
Multan
Lodhran
rural
6
Multan
Mailsi
village in rural area
5

8. W H AT W E L E A R N E D

9. W H AT W E L E A R N E D
BISP recipients are very poor and live day-to-day, or at best, month-to-month, and they are all
illiterate. Their primary concerns were making sure they could pay for food, electricity, rent (in the
city), medicine and saving for dowries for their daughters. For mothers of daughters a few years
before getting married, dowry savings were a pressing concern.

10. Rural
Karim is a widow from Lodhran. Her largest expense is
medicine. She is completely illiterate and can’t identify
roman numerals, even on rupee notes. Her daughter
purchases goods for her. She has to travel 7km and
spends 100-550PKR to get her BISP payment and is not
allowed in the bank.
REPRESENTATIVE BENEFICIARIES
This beneficiary’s husband doesn’t contribute financially. Her
eldest daughter contributes 4000-5000 per month. She uses
BISP funds for rent and said, “how much we get, we eat.”
When there is not enough incoming money she borrows
“door to door.”
Urban
Just Getting By
Parveen sews clothes at home and her husband is a bike
mechanic. She has 4 kids and 3 of them are literate. Though
she owes 3000 PKR for the electricity bill she saves in a
trunk in her home for a dowry. When she first married she
saved “pocket money” from her husband to buy the sewing
machine she now uses for work.
Able to Save
Bushra is married with three kids and has another one on the
way. She works as a dishwasher and her husband is an
electrician. She was the most literate of all the women we
spoke to. She was able to write and read roman numerals in
English. The ATM is right around the corner. She is
saving for a trip to Mecca.

11. I R R E G U L A R PAY M E N T S
All of the women interviewed were grateful for the BISP payments, which were an important
part of their budget or of their savings plan. However, there was a pervasive sense of distrust
of the BISP program because of the irregularity of the payments. Many of the women told of
going to the bank or an agent because they heard that there had been a distribution of
money, but their account was empty. They did not know the reason they did not get their
money.
BISP money has historically been paid irregularly and at different times for different people in
the same village.

12. N O A C C E S S T O M O N E Y I N D E P E N D E N T LY
Most women were not able to get their money themselves from an ATM, or did not understand
what was happening when they got their money from an agent. Some women got help using
the ATM from a respected female friend from the neighborhood or a relative. Younger kids,
older women or men seem to have more agency to engage with a bank. Some women got
help from someone at the bank. At one branch we watched the branch “chai wallah” or tea
boy volunteer his time helping the women at the ATM.

13. This woman arrived at the ATM with two other female family members and her son. She was not able
to access her money for an entire year and a half and was receiving it all at once. The “Chai Wallah,” or
building’s tea boy is helping her withdraw her money.

14. For every woman who received a windfall, we saw countless others who couldn’t get any money
out. The current irregularity of payments, and difficulty accessing the bank have got in the way of
the women building enough personal trust and confidence in the system for them to leave their
money there. The system has not demonstrated that it is trustworthy, and the women do not have
confidence that they could get their money out of the system if they needed it.

15. The women’s illiteracy, lack of agency outside the house and
lack of experience with banking makes it:
1
Difficult for them to get their money independently.
2
Difficult for them to play their expected role in taking advantage of the transparency
in the system to monitor the correctness of their payments or amount in their
account.

16. GROWING BRANCHLESS BANKING
PROVIDE
SOM ETHING USEFUL
ESTABLISH TRUST
Reliability
Communication
Transparency
Consistency and Practice
Take something BISP
recipients do already and
make it better
REM OVE BARRIERS
Process communication
Proximity
Access
Account opening

17. U N D E R S TA N D I N G L I T E R A C Y
& C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E S T I N G

18. This women was
unable to understand
written numbers
NUMERACY
Illiteracy is the hidden hurdle that makes it difficult to bring
financial inclusion to BISP recipients. Systems that should
work in theory break down when beneficiaries, the most
important player in the system, cannot interact with the
system themselves.

19. The standard for literacy in Pakistan is to be able to write your own name. Most women in Pakistan are
unable to get over even this low bar. Literacy studies in other regions report much more capability than
we found in the rural areas in Southern Punjab we visited. The challenge of communicating with BISP
recipients is extreme.

20. DIRECTION
Understanding numerals is highly contextual. For example,
a beneficiary was able to enter in the following phone
number but read and entered in the number from right to
left, the way Urdu script is read. We saw the same issue
when it came to entering PINs into an ATM.

21. WORDS
This phone receipt
was not understood by
recipients
This message,
which only consists
of numbers, was
comprehensible
Being illiterate is more limiting than not being able to read. Any words can complicate and confuse the
reader, sending the implicit message that it is not for them.

22. I N F O R M AT I O N H I E R A R C H Y
The recipient misunderstood ATM receipt and we could have
defrauded her of 1000 PKR. She did understand the large font on the
redesigned agent receipt.

23. Although the women we all illiterate and unfamiliar with technology, this does not mean they are unable
to learn or that they lacked other knowledge. We learned this from an old woman who had spent her
entire life in the country, and could not use a cell phone. But when we described some financial
products to her, she immediately understood how to use them to her advantage in ways that our team
had not anticipated.

24. COMMUNICATION
Our recommendation is to design communication specifically for illiterate people. This must be tested
in the field before widespread dissemination. In particular, we recommend using photographs to teach
BISP recipients how to use the banking system, and simple, large text of only the most relevant
information to increase the transparency in the system.

25. This is an example
of what a simple
ATM poster could
look like

26. This simple,
photographic poster
provided ample
guidance. Here the
beneficiary was
focused intently on
following the poster to
her right.

27. This simple,
photographic poster
provided ample
guidance. Here the
beneficiary was
focused intently on
following the poster to
her right.

28. After completing the
interview. She asked our
team member Sara, to
show her the posters
again.

29. Then, using the
posters, she explained
the process of using an
ATM to her sister-in-law
in the adjoining house.

30. In response to the
widespread desire to
learn and access ATMs
independently, we created
and tested smaller, shareable versions of
the poster.

31. There was confusion
around what was going
on at an agent hub. There
was no transparency into
their account balance or history
and the women
were not able to read
their receipts.

32. We tested simple posters
with the beneficiaries to set
expectations and explain the
agent process. Recipients
were able to understand the
posters and articulate how
their experience differed.

33. This is an example of
what a simple agents
poster could look
like. We also made a
shareable version.

34. T R A N S PA R E N C Y R E C O M M E N D AT I O N S
Making it easier for BISP recipients to monitor their payments makes
it more difficult for them to be defrauded.
These are examples
of communication of
amount paid that are
more transparent
because illiterate BISP
recipients are more likely
to understand them.

35. PRODUCTS & PRODUCT TESTING

36. GROWING BRANCHLESS BANKING
Rather than try to change behavior, we built product ideas around current behavior
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Committee saving system
Beneficiaries commonly use informal and traditional saving systems. There is significant peer pressure involved with
maintaining regular payment. The participants appreciate that the money is kept by a trusted member in the community but is
also out of reach.
Worry about when BISP money will arrive
Because of the unreliability of BISP payments, beneficiaries have to borrow informally. Their lack of access to BISP funds also
creates accidental accumulated savings in their account.
Community lending and financial health
Informal lending occurs frequently with one’s reputation as the only collateral. A beneficiary receiving an informal loan becomes
indebted to her community and depending on the circumstance, the loan may sometimes be considered a gift. When it is a
loan, the beneficiaries are compelled to pay it back to maintain the community’s financial health.
Accumulated debt on electricity bill
Electricity bills vary monthly and are a frequent source of stress for beneficiary families. Debt is frequently incurred on these
bills and the fear of one's electricity being cut is pervasive. Some of our beneficiaries were familiar with a bank as “ a place
where you pay your electricity bill.”
Trunk to store money
Beneficiaries frequently store money at home in a trunk. Most often, it is savings for their daughter's dowry. At home, their
savings feel tangible and easily accessible.
Khatta at the Karyana
These stores provide informal credit to members of their neighborhood. In order to maintain access to the store and keep up
their reputation in the community, beneficiaries must maintain good credit.
Group agency
Beneficiaries feel safer and more comfortable outside of their home with groups of peer women. These groups are often led by
a trusted and more educated female from the community.

37. PRODUCTS
A simple savings product and a loan product which are just different options for when a
BISP recipient receives her money– these products are a natural extension of how the recipients are
thinking about their interactions with the bank today and are stepping stones to fuller financial
inclusion.

38. Advancing financial inclusion to improve the lives of the poor
www.cgap.org
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